Economy

The police estimated that more than 300,000 people turned out on Saturday night, but a company monitoring the turnout for the Israeli news media said the total was about 400,000, with almost 300,000 gathering in Tel Aviv alone. Tens of thousands more rallied in Jerusalem, Haifa and other cities.

Rebels control most of Libya and are moving forward with setting up a new government, but they might hold off on declaring victory until Gadhafi is caught and his remaining strongholds are defeated. Gadhafi and his staunchest allies have been on the run since the fall of the capital late last month. Loyalists have entrenched themselves in several towns, including besieged Bani Walid, some 90 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli.

The events of 9/11 reverberated through many spheres of American life but nowhere more profoundly than in American policy toward the outside world. Slowly, the supertanker that is the American foreign and defense establishment turned itself around, creaking and groaning, as Americans prepared to face new enemies. During the subsequent decade, we created a vast new security bureaucracy, encompassing some 1,200 government organizations, 1,900 companies, and 854,000 people with security clearances, according to a Washington Post investigation carried out last year. We launched two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. We organized counterterrorism operations in far-flung places such as the Philippines and Yemen, changed the culture of our military and reoriented our foreign policy. We sharpened our focus on al-Qaida and its imitators. And we spent, according to one estimate, $3 trillion.

“There’s no doubt there are pressures in our economy,” Swan said today in his weekly economic note. “Many industries like manufacturing and retailing are doing it tough as they battle with cautious household spending and a high Australian dollar.”

Swan is waiting for second-quarter gross domestic product figures on Sept. 7 to show the economy resumed its expansion after a 1.2 percent contraction in the first three months of the year as flooded coal mines, railways and farmland hurt exports. GDP probably grew 1 percent, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 23 economists.

Environment

...here’s what I was left to think about: Much of surviving or staying safe during a natural disaster is the work you do well in advance. The gutters you repaired and used the right nails to secure, so they won’t blow off. The propane tanks you filled last month. The car wipers that were replaced and the tires that have tread. The extra month’s supply of medicines you got from your MD, so you don’t have to run to the pharmacy today, even if you have just a few pills left in the current month’s prescription. Your larder.

No injuries were reported so far from Lee. But even before Lee swept ashore, there were scattered instances of water entering low-lying homes and businesses in Louisiana's bayou country — a region of fast-eroding wetlands long vulnerable to hurricanes and tropical storms. The storm prompted evacuations in bayou towns such as Jean Lafitte. Thousands were without power.

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Make no mistake about it, without plentiful, cheap, and easy to access oil, the United States of America would descend into chaos and collapse. The fantasies painted by “green” energy dreamers only serve to divert the attention of the non critical thinking masses from the fact our sprawling suburban hyper technological society would come to a grinding halt in a matter of days without the 18 to 19 million barrels per day needed to run this ridiculous reality show. Delusional Americans think the steaks, hot dogs and pomegranates in their grocery stores magically appear on the shelves, the thirty electronic gadgets that rule their lives are created out of thin air by elves and the gasoline they pump into their mammoth SUVs is their God given right. The situation was already critical in 2005 when the Hirsch Reportconcluded:

“The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.”

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Standard Chartered Bank predicts that, by the year 2020, China will overtake all of Europe as the second largest consumer of oil in the world, and should catch up to the U.S. by the year 2030 as China’s demand continues to rise while U.S. demand is expected to be flat. Chinese crude imports grew 17.5% in 2010 to 4.79 million barrels per day. China is importing 55% of its oil today versus 40% in 2004.

China’s oil consumption per capita has increased over 350% since the early 1980s to an estimated 2.7 barrels per year in 2011. Consumption per capita has risen nearly 100% in just the past decade. Oil consumption per capita in the U.S. currently ranks among the top industrialized nations in the world at 25 barrels per year. However, today’s consumption levels are approximately 20% lower than they were in 1979. The chart below paints a picture of woe for the United States and the world. China overtook the United States in auto sales in 2009. They now sell approximately 15 million new vehicles per year. India sells approximately 2 million new vehicles per year. The U.S. sells just over 12 million new vehicles per year. In China and India there are approximately 6 car owners per 100 people. In the U.S. there are 85 car owners per 100 people.

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The US dollar has fallen 15% versus a basket of worldwide currencies (DXY) since February 2009. This is amazing considering that 57% of the index weighting is the Euro. If you haven’t noticed, Europe is a basket case on the verge of economic disintegration. The US imports a net 9.4 million barrels of oil per day, or 49% of our daily consumption. Our largest suppliers are:

Canada – 2.6 million barrels per day

Mexico – 1.3 million barrels per day

Saudi Arabia – 1.1 million barrels per day

Nigeria – 1.0 million barrels per day

Venezuela – 1.0 million barrels per day

Russia – 600,000 barrels per day

Algeria – 500,000 barrels per day

Iraq – 400,000 barrels per day

These eight countries account for over 70% of our daily oil imports. You hear the “experts” on CNBC declare that our oil supply situation is secure because close to 60% of our daily usage is sourced from North America. The presumption is that Canada and Mexico are somehow under our control. There is one problem with this storyline. US oil production peaked in 1971 and relentlessly declines as M. King Hubbert predicted it would. Mexico will cease to be a supplier to the U.S. by 2015 as their Cantarell oil field is in collapse. Most of the oil supplied from Canada is from their tar sands. Expansion of these fields is difficult as it takes tremendous amounts of natural gas and water to extract the oil.

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Ben Bernanke is responsible for Americans paying $4 a gallon for gasoline. Zero interest rates, printing money out of thin air to buy $2 trillion of mortgage and Treasury bonds, and propping up insolvent criminal banks across the globe have one purpose – to deflate the value of the U.S. dollar. The rulers of the American Empire realize they can never repay the debts they have accumulated. They have chosen to default through debasement. It’s an insidious and immoral method of defaulting on your obligations.

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A barrel of oil cost $40 a barrel in early 2009. The U.S. dollar has declined 30% versus the Canadian dollar since early 2009. The U.S. dollar has shockingly declined 20% versus the Mexican Peso since early 2009. How could the mighty USD decline 20% against the currency of a 3rd world country on the verge of being a failed state? Ask Ben Bernanke. Our lenders can’t do much about the continuing debasement of our currency, but our oil suppliers can. They will raise the price of oil in proportion to our currency devaluation. Since Bernanke’s only solution is continuous debasement, the price of oil will relentlessly rise.

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Peak Oil Has Arrived

“By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD. At present, investment in oil production is only beginning to pick up, with the result that production could reach a prolonged plateau. By 2030, the world will require production of 118 MBD, but energy producers may only be producing 100 MBD unless there are major changes in current investment and drilling capacity.” -2010 Joint Operating Environment Report

We’ve arrived at the point where demand has begun to outpace supply and even the onset of another worldwide recession will not assuage this fact. World oil supply has peaked just below 89 million barrels per day. Supply has since fallen to 87.5 million barrels per day, as Libyan supply was completely removed from world markets. The International Energy Agency is already forecasting worldwide demand to reach 90 million barrels per day in the second half of 2011 and reach 92 million barrels per day in 2012. The IEA warns that “just at the time when demand is expected to recover, physical limits on production capacity could lead to another wave of price increases, in a cyclical pattern that is not new to the world oil market.”

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The world is trapped in an inescapable conundrum. As supply dwindles, prices increase, causing global economies to contract, and temporarily causing a drop in prices, except the lows are higher each time. The drill, drill, drill ideologues do nothing but confuse and mislead the easily led masses. We have 2% of the world’s oil reserves and consume more than 20% of the daily output. We consume 7 billion barrels of oil per year.

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I wrote an article called Peak Denial About Peak Oil exactly one year ago when gas was selling for $2.60 a gallon. I railed at the short sightedness of politicians and citizens alike for ignoring a calamitous crisis that was directly before their eyes. Just like our accumulation of $4 billion per day in debt, peak oil is simply a matter of math. We cannot take on ever increasing amounts of debt in order to live above our means without collapsing our economic system. We cannot expect to run our energy intensive world with a depleting energy source. There is no amount of spin and PR that can change the math. Un-payable levels of debt and dwindling supplies of oil will merge into a perfect storm over the next ten years to permanently change our world. The change will be traumatic, horrible, bloody and a complete surprise to the non-critical thinking public.

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“In the longer run, unless we take serious steps to prepare for the day that we can no longer increase production of conventional oil, we are faced with the possibility of a major economic shock—and the political unrest that would ensue.” – Dr. James Schlesinger – former US Energy Secretary, 16th November 2005

We were warned. We failed to heed the warnings. If we had begun making the dramatic changes to our society 5 to 10 years ago, we may have been able to partially alleviate the pain and suffering ahead. Instead we spent our national treasure fighting Wars on Terror and bailing out criminal bankers. Converting truck and bus fleets to natural gas; expanding the use of safe nuclear power; utilizing wind, geothermal, and solar where economically feasible; buying more fuel efficient vehicles; and creating more localized communities supported by light rail with easy access to bike and walking options, would have allowed a more gradual shift to a less energy intensive society.

We’ve done nothing to prepare for the onset of peak oil. Until this foreseeable crisis hits with its full force like a Category 5 hurricane, Americans will continue to fill up their M1 tank sized, leased SUVs, tweet about Lady Gaga’s latest stunt, and tune in to this week’s episode of Jersey Shore. Meanwhile, economic stagnation, catastrophe and wars for oil are darkening the skies on our horizon.

The reality of peak oil, ongoing recession/depression, falling USD, peak debt and the changing focus of world economy to the far east all hitting us at once is inescapable. If we had started preparing 10-20 years ago we might be able to say we can ride out the storm. But, we haven't even begun yet. We probably won't until scenes like this become commonplace.

David J. Nagel graduated (magna cum laude) from the University of Notre Dame (B.S. in Engineering Science 1960), and completed graduate work at the University of Maryland (M.S. in Physics 1969 and Ph.D. in Engineering Materials 1977). In 1960, he received a regular commission in the U. S. Navy after ranking first in his NROTC class. During active duty with the Navy, he was Administrative Officer and Navigator aboard the USS ARNEB on OPERATION DEEPFREEZE (1960-2), and then he served as a Technical Liaison Officer at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) (1962-4). After receiving a reserve commission and joining the civilian staff of the NRL in 1964, Dr. Nagel held positions of increasing responsibility as a Research Physicist, Section Head, Branch Head and, finally, Superintendent of the Condensed Matter and Radiation Sciences Division. In the last position for 13 years, he was a member of the Senior Executive Service, and managed the experimental and theoretical research and development efforts of 150 government and contractor personnel. At the NRL, Dr. Nagel's research interests centered on radiation physics, especially x-ray spectroscopy, and on materials sciences, with applications to materials analysis, plasma diagnostics, integrated circuit production, environmental studies, cold fusion, and MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS). He has written or co-authored over 150 technical articles, reports, book chapters and encyclopedia articles. He is lead-author of a patent on x-ray lithography, which formed the basis of a 100-person startup company in Rochester NY. After serving 26 years in the Naval Reserve, including duty as Commanding Officer of three Reserve units and the national Technology Mobilization Program, Dr. Nagel retired as a Captain in the United States Naval Reserve in 1990. He left the Civil Service and became a Research Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science of The George Washington University in 1998. Dr. Nagel is a recognized authority on low energy nuclear reactions in condensed matter. Besides that, he is now working on the development and applications of micro- and nano-technologies, with emphasis on analytical micro-fluidics, wireless sensor systems and several applications to military operations and homeland security. Dr. Nagel teaches a graduate course on Applications of MEMS annually, and mentors students for their research projects that involve MEMS. He serves as a consultant to both government and industry in the areas of micro- and nano-technologies by providing technology assessments and studies, and by technical writing.